James Axler – The Mars Arena

The Mars Arena

The Mars Arena

38 in the Deathland series James Axler

Chapter One

It was the moon that gave the brushwooders away, hanging against the sable sky, as white and bright as a man’s skull just carved clean.

Ryan Cawdor stifled a curse as he moved through the shadows and silence of the forest, quiet himself so the stalkers wouldn’t know he was among them. The Steyr rifle that had seen him out of so many tight spots across Deathlands was hard and sure in his hands.

Jak Lauren had noticed the brushwooders first, even before the sun had dropped like a burst heart against the leaden evening sky. But Ryan’s combat sense had been prickling the back of his neck an hour before that.

Ryan held his breath as he watched the brushwooders, not wanting the thin gray fog to give away his position. The pursuers had broken into at least two groups that he could identify, and walked up the broken terrain in a staggered line. It was a pincer movement, as old as war itself.

The one-eyed warrior had used it a few times himself, and he knew it would be deadly effective. He and his companions were outnumbered at least seven to one.

The sky was clear at the moment, but against the mountains the weather could change in an instant. The wind came out of the north and carried a wolfs bite. Ryan had dressed warmly, wearing a heavy coat he’d found after he and his companions had raided deserted houses along their trek in from the gateway among the Western Islands. But he’d had to shed the coat to double back on their would-be attackers because the material was too light colored.

He felt as if he were freezing on the outside, but inside his survival instinct was burning him up. He was a tall man, a couple inches over six feet, broad shouldered and clean limbed. His dark curling hair held a frosting of snow from the flurries that appeared suddenly over the Sierra Nevada along the Cific Ocean.

Most women would have called him handsome, if not for the black leather patch that covered his left eye, and the cruel, puckered scar that ran from the corner of his right eye, down his cheek to just above his jawbone.

Two pointmen, one the head of each group of the pincer arms, met and knelt to examine the ground in the light of the full moon. Ryan knew they were following footsteps his group had left in the damp earth underneath the crust of snow. Given the weather conditions, it was hard to pass unnoticed even as practiced as his people were.

They’d seen the brushwooders earlier in the day without being seen themselves, not many hours after they’d made the jump through the mat-trans into the area. It had taken Ryan only a few minutes of observation to figure them for the raiding parties he’d been told about. The companions had encountered a group of farmers in the early evening and learned that brushwooders had fired several farmhouses and killed a dozen people. It was part of a spree of violence that had been going on for days.

Violence was nothing new in Deathlands, or to the companions. The fleeing group of farmers had also warned Ryan that the weapons they carried would be highly prized by the brushwooders. Their leader had designs on consolidating his hold on the area and killing anyone who stood to oppose him. Adding to his armament was necessary to achieve his goal.

Ryan had kept his people clear of the roving hands of brushwooders, but their search for a pass through the mountains had brought them here, and within sight of one of the brushwooder patrols. Now they were running through the darkness for their lives.

Rising, his nose tilted up and forward as if he were taking in the air like a hunting hound, the pointman nearer to Ryan turned to his group and pointed toward the east, where the terrain grew steeper. He moved on, moonlight glinting from the blaster in his hands. He’d torn branches off trees and stuck them inside his clothing for camouflage, as well as down the neck of his coat and in the sleeves. Other branches were pinned against his chest and shoulders.